The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, November 30, 2012

Oren: Media Bias Helps Terrorists

by Alana Goodman

In response to the Washington Post ombudsman’s comparison
of Hamas missiles to “bee stings” the other day, Israeli Ambassador
Michael Oren took the media to task in WaPo’s opinion section this
morning. Oren doesn’t single out ombud Patrick Pexton directly, but it’s
clearly implied:

Media naturally gravitate toward dramatic and highly visual stories.
Reports of 5.5 million Israelis gathered nightly in bomb shelters
scarcely compete with the Palestinian father interviewed after losing
his son. Both are, of course, newsworthy, but the first tells a more
complete story while the second stirs emotions.This is precisely what Hamas wants. It seeks to instill a visceral
disgust for any Israeli act of self-defense, even one taken after years
of unprovoked aggression.Hamas strives to replace the tens of thousands of phone calls and
text messages Israel sent to Palestinian civilians, warning them to
leave combat zones, with lurid images of Palestinian suffering. If Hamas
cannot win the war, it wants to win the story of the war. …Like Americans, we cherish a free press, but unlike the terrorists,
we are not looking for headlines. Our hope is that media resist the
temptation to give them what they want.

As Oren writes, this is exactly the kind of coverage that benefits
Hamas, and the frustrating part is many journalists don’t seem to have a
problem with it. Israel has the right to use force to defend its own
people from attacks, but media figures like Pexton act as if any
response is out-of-bounds simply because Israel has a strong military.

To give an analogy, there are no
reliable estimates of Taliban and insurgent casualties in Afghanistan,
but the numbers are obviously much larger than the number of fallen NATO
forces. Add in the number of Afghan civilian casualties (the majority
of them killed by the Taliban and its allies) and that would greatly
outweigh the number of NATO fatalities. The Taliban also fights with
unsophisticated weapons, improvised explosive devices and Soviet-era
rifles, and limited training. Often the Taliban blows up its own
fighters while setting up IEDs; in some cases they fail to go off or are
detected. Meanwhile, the U.S. has the greatest military the world has
ever seen. Not only do NATO troops have access to far superior weapons
and training, but billions are spent on counter-IED efforts and
protective gear.

Yet serious journalists don’t contrast the number of NATO fatalities
with the number of insurgency fatalities (or lump in Afghan civilian
deaths with Taliban deaths) without putting it in proper context. They
don’t compare the Taliban’s IEDs and small-arms attacks — which have
caused horrific NATO casualties — to “bee stings on a bear’s behind.”
They don’t describe U.S. defense against insurgency attacks as
“disproportionate,” or set it up as a David v. Goliath scenario.

Hamas is as much a terrorist group as the Taliban, but they are not
treated that way by a large portion of the media. As Oren argues, this
type of coverage will only encourage more violence from Hamas, not less.Alana GoodmanSource: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/11/29/oren-media-bias-helps-terrorists/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.